Where Bond seduced his beauties: the backlots of Pinewood Studios

Bond seduced his beauties here, Barbara Windsor lost her bikini – and Keira Knightley got drenched. David James Smith roams the backlots of Pinewood Studios

Here nothing is ever quite what it seems to be. It should come as no surprise that the hand-carved solid oak entrance to the main building of Pinewood film studios is actually an extravagantly grand Elizabethan fireplace, imported seven decades ago from a stately home in Derbyshire. It was set up on plinths to make room for the doors beneath, which are from the RMS Mauretania, an ocean liner decommissioned in the 1930s. Pinewood bought the bulk of its fixtures and fittings at auction.

It was here that Tom Humphries stood sentry, stationed at this opulent facade throughout the best and busiest years of the studio's glamorous past, which is celebrated in a new exhibition of photographs from its heyday. As the studio's official commissionaire, Tom was a striking figure in his peaked cap and braided blue uniform, and even now, at 97, he still commands attention.